2015 Artists

Amanda Andrei - My Dove

Performance piece.

The ensemble of "My Dove" was a series of work inspired by a play script and included a 3D collage, a song, a placeholder for a poem (since the original was lost), and the performance itself. It posed questions about various artistic methodologies, the process of the artist, and the role of remix and collaboration in various forms of art.

BENTLEY BROWN, JAIME GONZALEZ-CAPITEL, CASEY TILTON - [VG]Art

Interactive installation.

Inspired by James Connolly and Kyle Evans' "Cracked Ray Tube", [VG]Art hacked a VGA cable and sent audio signal through an Arduino board, producing an analog visual translation, a monochrome display of oscillating lines that recalls music player visualizations and invites experimentation with different accessories. [VG]Art was displayed in combination with two simple synthesizer devices assembled by Ken Wake.

Nathan Danskey & John Hanacek - God-ish

Interactive installation. Components: Video content by John Hanacek, built in maxMSP by John Hanacek and Nathan Danskey.

Your influence changes the world, you are a god...ish.

'God-ish' is an interactive video installation where viewers are invited to change a peaceful looping rain scene into a lightning strike with thunder to follow with just the power of their hand.

Katie Gach - From

Video. Run time: 16m 17s.

This project, titled “From,” explores ideas of nationality and nostalgia in the context of off-world living. What will it mean to be "from" a place when humans literally have no ground to stand on?

In an imagined future in which humans live in the sterile, built environment of a space station, nostalgia for Earth could survive in artistic forms like songs, poems, and stories. Those who maintain these cultural artifacts will hold a capacity for connection to others from those places, even after the generations who knew those places are gone.

To imagine this future, I interviewed dozens of people who currently live outside of their place of origin. Each of them shared a song, story, or poem unique to that place, and speculated about the reaction they’d have if they heard someone sharing that piece in their current context. These audio recordings are played over live footage from the HD cameras attached to the International Space Station as it orbits Earth.

Ramon Zamora Marroquin - Grammar of Snapchat

Video installation. Components: three iPads, three wire stands.

Inspired by Xu Bing's "Book from the Ground", Grammar of Snapchat explored how some patterns are created through the use of different mediums, and how grammar can emerge between users of said medium. To communicate this to the audience the clips were formatted to look like snapchats by using a filter that simulated the app's UI.

Chris Miller - The Triphonic Improvulator

There are any number of computer programs that can create beautiful original music. The goal of this installation was not to replace human compositions, but encourage a creative version of what JCR Licklider famously called "man-computer symbiosis." By pairing two random melody generator programs with a keyboard, exhibit goers were encouraged to improvise a totally original composition with computer bandmates.

Olivia Payne - Digiprint

Textile installation.

"Digiprint" is a quilt produced from patterns that are digitally coded and printed on cotton via Spoonflower. The patterns were produced using BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for Commodore 64, a 1980s home computer (via this emulator); BASIC is a simple programming language that allowed experimentation in random character generation. The emulator allowed for a playful exploration into a bit of computation's history.

To display the fabrics, I constructed a quilt. The pattern of the quilt follows the Fibonacci sequence, in this case by inch: [0], 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… The next measurement for the pattern is found by adding up the two measurements before it. Two 1″ squares, seamed together, then seamed to a 2″ square, which is then seamed to a 3″ square, and so on.

Code: 10 PRINT CHR$(____.5 + RND(1)) ; : GOTO 10

*The blank "____" is a placeholder for the character value. The character number "205" will print the first image below, as it alternates between two PETSCII characters, 205, or "/" and 206, or "\" in a randomized fashion. Interestingly, there is an entire book devoted to this one line of code. Other characters/patterns in the set follow. There are 9 patterns in all.

Sam Redd - Space Ocarina

Instrument / interactive installation.

The Space Ocarina incorporates electrical circuitry, music, and embodied interaction experience. The object is a golden easter egg modified to function as a simple musical instrument. It features a toggle switch and 4 "keys" that change the tone emitted by an internal speaker in response to light exposure. This object is also a kind of experiment- how people will interact with it, what they seem to expect from it, and whether they recognize it as a musical instrument.

This project was a study in human-robot interaction. I attached writing instruments and a paint dispenser to two floor-sweeping "Roomba" style robots, and then let them run in a small pen lined with paper. I also left paints and markers out for people to use and encouraged them to interact with the exhibit however they wished. Roombas and similar autonomous household machines are interesting to me in part because users sometimes become endeared to them and want to spend time interacting with these machines (which is funny, because the intention of a household robot is to spare people the time and attention they would otherwise have needed to spend completing that chore). I wanted to see how people would observe and interact with this type of machine in a different environment and on an unstructured task -- whether they would assist them, interrupt them, or collaborate with them.

A modern representation of 1950s and 1960s farming advertisements showcased through a modern venue - tablets. This is displayed in conjunction with "vintage" farming technologies. Some of these technologies are still used today, but some have become exclusively recognized as old farming tools. This can represent a variety of different messages. These include feminism, the 'basic' 1950s ideologies, the technological shift of the 21st century, media marketing and its notable progression from print to digital, and the practical sense of farming equipment and how it is displayed in advertisements. These things all may seem useless to the average individual, but keep in mind - for future presenters- the most basic of technologies are sometimes integral to the production of food, well-being of livestock, and preservation of farms who do things right.